Military Laser Technology Roundup

The flying laser cannon could be accompanied by a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) fitted with mirrors. These relay UAVs would be harder to spot and more disposable than a 747, and could bounce the high-energy beam onto targets that might otherwise be out of range, or out of the plane’s line-of-sight. With multiple flying drones, a single ABL could cover an exponentially wider area. It would be an entirely new combination of lasers and robots­—and it may be the answer to critics aiming to dismantle ABL before it ever flies.

Snake Oil Baron notes that power lasers that are land based or on large navy ships would also become more effective.

— Raised its demonstrated lethality by precisely combining two laser chains to produce record power -30 kW – in an excellent beam-beam quality of 2.1 times the theoretical limit — Operated at this performance level for more than five minutes continuously and more than 40 minutes total; and — Achieved electrical-to-optical efficiency of greater than 19 percent. — have proven all aspects of our scalable design for 100kW

The new material–cesium zirconium phosphorus selenium (CsZrPSe6)–can add, subtract and double laser beam wavelengths, enabling devices with two laser sources to produce many usable wavelengths. With two lasers you could generate all the frequencies.

Argonne researchers claim the new technology could be used in sensors that detect biological and chemical weapons.

The new compound produced frequency-doubled beams 15 times more intense than those produced by the best commercial materials today, according to Kanatzidis.